l personages of the fete. The greatest
cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed. Monsieur Lieuvain,
the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,
Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin
sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant
fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a
veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our
little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of
a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.'

"Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And
he added: "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the
priests understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please,
messieurs the followers of Loyola!"

IX.

A WOODLAND IDYLL.

Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he
appeared.

The day after the show he had said to himself:

"We mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake."

And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he
had thought he was too late, and then he reasoned thus:

"If from the first day she loved me, she must, from impatience to see me
again, love me more. Let's go on with it!"

And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the
room, he saw Emma turn pale. She was alone. The day was drawing in. The
small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the
gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in
the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral.

Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first
conventional phrases.

"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."

"Seriously?" she cried.

"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it
was because I did not want to come back."

"Why?"

"Can you not guess?"

He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing.
He went on:

"Emma!"

"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.

"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not
to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and
that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the world
calls you thus! Besides it is not your name; it is the name of another!"
he repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands. "Yes, I
think of you constantly. The memo